Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Information for authors receiving funding from the Information for authors receiving funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
As of Agreements on or after January 1, 2015, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Open Access Policy requires authors acknowledging funding to make their published article available as open access immediately upon publication under a CC BY 4.0 license.
ACS has made arrangements with the Foundation to ensure this requirement can be met for all ACS journals with no charge to authors. From January 1, 2021, their new policy is to support APC funding in pure open access journals. You can view a list of our fully open access journals here. Alternatively, if your employer has an ACS read and publish agreement in place, your APC may be covered by your institution.
Instructions for authors receiving funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
During submission: Provide all requested information about your funding source(s). The ACS Paragon Plus manuscript submission system includes options enabling authors to provide funding information.
After acceptance: Sign the Journal Publishing Agreement. Upon acceptance, Authors will receive an email with a customized link to complete and sign a Journal Publishing Agreement. The Journal Publishing Agreement assistant will identify you as an author that is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, allowing you to retain copyright and publish your research under a CC BY Creative Commons license. Find out more information about the forms and instructions for the Journal Publishing Agreements here.
How the ACS works with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to ensure open access for your article
The Foundation has an agreement with the ACS that covers costs associated with the open access CC BY 4.0 license available in all ACS fully open access journals. This is administered by a direct payment from the Foundation to the ACS, with no charge to authors. By signing the publishing agreement that allows you to retain copyright, your article will automatically flow to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for approval. ACS also handles the deposit of your final published article in PubMed Central(PMC). The contents of PMC are mirrored on Europe PMC. Nothing more is required on your part.